Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Delayed Neural Responses and Deceptions

Phew! Finally, I am here. I had said I'd come back the previous night I made the last post, but I didn't. Since then, till the last weekend, I couldn't have written anything, subtracting one person from all of it, because that one person is all that had happened. Weekend saw me preparing for a quiz, which I intended to do well, genuinely. I worked hard too. Then Sunday happened. I remember an incident my Samudra Da (whom I've always called just "Dada") had told me. He was on his way back to Durgapur from the Burdwan University. He was standing on the railway platform, waiting for the train. There were a lot of people from Durgapur (faces he knew very well, and faces he barely knew) on the platform, as there usually is. There was this guy he knew from his street-life days, who was standing too near the edge of the platform. One of those super-fast non-stop express trains came, and passed away. No one gave it much notice. Except the men standing around the man too near the edge. The air pressure had pulled him farther towards the edge. He had fallen on the ground. One whole leg lying on the platform, attached to his body. One half of the other leg lay bloodstained, down in the tracks, the other upper half being attached to his body. Slowly, everyone noticed him. No one said a word for a while. This man himself, didn't scream, or cry or anything. He used his hands to drag himself down onto the tracks, and then he took the leg in his hands, and tried fixing it back to the other half of it. Stupefied, and then hysterical, he continued doing it, till he gradually realized what had actually happened. By then even people had started to scream. What had surprised my Dada was the fact, that, he had felt no pain when a part of his limb broke away. Welcome to our nervous system. When something unexpectedly awful happens, our nervous system remains too shocked to react. Call it "numbness", in my literary version. Gradually, it absorbs the truth, and then, gradually, it reacts, sending signals to the brain about how painful it actually is. Then, the brain signals the rest of the body to shake or cry or whatever. That's exactly my previous Sunday evening for you. My brain had actually comprehended what had actually happened on Monday morning. And, after a long time, I did something utterly selfish. I realized I shouldn't go out, shouldn't meet people, and LEAST OF ALL, meet Shauvik, my quiz partner. I would have made irreversible mistakes if I met him. I tried to sleep off the trauma. I failed. Minutes before the quiz began, I told Shauvik that I'm deserting him. He went alone, and won the second position. Then I went to college, and faced worse. As usual, I did a good job of pretending to be cool with everything. But then I did make a few mistakes today: a few of those "bare-truth-before-you" moments. And then I was alone in a movie hall, again, and before the movie had started, I found my eyes wet!Apart from this incident, there has been others too, the days were as normal as everyday, and at the same time, happening for the first time. 5th December, for example. Till the next day evening I didn't feel any gratitude towards the person who did everything to ensure I have a bad time on the day supposed to be my birthday. For me, it was just a normal day, a day, when I have to smile all throughout, even when the pain's choking me out of my breath. After that, I got feedback from the people who participated, and I was feeling grateful. I couldn't thank the organizer in person, because I wasn't sure if I'd realize I'm lying, the very moment I'd use the words. But I am grateful for what was done. It doesn't matter now, whether I liked what was done. I am glad it was done. A big controversy, there. But no, as I mentioned in the very beginning, till this weekend, very little of what happened is unrelated to that one person. So, I can't write down the exact truth about what exactly happened on 5th December, and what exactly I felt. Which is a pity, because this was one place, where I wrote down everything, everything that I couldn't tell Disha, Payal, Puspen etc. Not because I love to express, but because I want to keep track of the things I'm going through. I want to keep track of the process of my own growth. Anyway, it's okay. I'll store it in my mind. [well, i did write it, and then deleted the whole paragraph; this is the edited version]I did meet Puspen before all of it happened, and told him the basic details of what was going on right then, what had happened till then. He was reminded of nearly similar things he had to go through.A few days ago, I was walking on an orange-lamp-lit-road, my eyes following my shadow. I observed that I look too young to be a twenty-year old. On the contrary, I feel too old for a twenty-year old. The thought can't be categorized into pleasant or unpleasant, but it did depress me, for a minute. I had some good food in the past few days. I met someone yesterday. She had made my day. Only that, she made yesterday the first day in a month, that I cried myself to sleep. She reminded me, at night of course, of all the people I have lost. Though she had been the best thing that happened all day, by the time I fell asleep, I regretted meeting her. Delayed neural responses, as usual. Anyway, I don't need to write anything more, I'll recollect the rest from the previous two statements. I wish I could write each incident that happened since my last post, in greater detail. Each incident had meant a hell to me, and had started "chains of thoughts", you know. When I try to pen down things, I get to figure out a lot of un-figured-out feelings and thoughts. That's why I write. To have "clarity". It's the same way you need a pen and a paper to solve a complicated numerical problem. Some things are too complicated to be solved in your mind, without the help of a pen and paper. But then again, I'll manage without clarity. I don't need to find out the answers to the questions that kept hitting me last evening. [ The most common ones were- Disha and Puspen, will they be together in the end? Victoria Memorial, why? Taj Mahal, why was it in that movie song? Sayak, isn't he better off? Me, what am I doing here? What does this very moment mean? Should I go away? Should I stay? ] I will manage without the answers. Ah, I'll manage without peace of mind! I am strong! And I tell myself, that it's all going to be insignificant. I am not OK with it. I am not at all OK, in any remote way. But then, when was I ever OK with things that are actually good for me?I am glad I hadn't done what I wanted to do yesterday, at 4pm, at Park Street. First, I had wanted to hit the bike I was sitting on. Then I wanted to text someone and let out all the anger in words (slangs, actually). Then, I wanted to cry. Then I wanted to run away. I didn't do any of them. I asked Sayak to help me to get away from it. He was too engrossed in the latest theories on Diya, to care. And I'm grateful for that. I'm glad, like I was on 5th December. Do you know why I walk behind the two of you? So that I get to see "it". The look in your eyes, the holding of hands, everything. The more I see it, the tighter my throat gets. I like that feeling, you know.It's so easy to deceive, and it's so much more easier to get deceived.